In recent years, the scales of raising, butchering, and processing of slaughtered body of edible beasts and birds are becoming larger, and a variety of automation is proceeding in those fields. In the past, separation of thighs from a slaughtered beast or bird has been done by hand work, recently inventions has been proposed concerning suitable methods and systems for boning slaughtered beasts and birds.
As to processing of thighs, a proposal concerning a boning system of the leg of an edible fowl is disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No.6-284854.
Said proposal aims to carry out automatically each step of separating the leg into meat and bones, which was conventionally carried out by hand work. The system consists of an apparatus for transferring legs, an apparatus for making an incision along the bones of the leg of the edible fowl, an apparatus for severing the leg at the knee joint to separate it into a thigh and a drumstick, an apparatus for pulling the thigh bone (femur) away from the thigh, an apparatus for stripping the drumstick of the meat around the tibia and fibula, and an apparatus for cutting tendons of the thigh. The leg is held at the ankle by the endless chain of said leg transferring apparatus so that the leg is kept substantially horizontal in order to carry out prescribed processes. Transfer means are provided for transferring the leg processed in the preceding apparatus to the succeeding apparatus.
A system of making incision in the meat along the bones of the leg of an edible fowl is disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No.7-39296.
According to said disclosure, the system is for making incision automatically in the meat of a thigh and drumstick along the bones of the leg. It is possible to make a cut along the thigh bone, knee joint, and bones of the drumstick by means of the rotation control means and rotation forcing and braking means of a cutting means.
As to boning of the upper half of a slaughtered chicken, proposals are disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No.11-266780 and No.2001-211818. The proposals disclosed in the references relate to a method and apparatus for automatic boning of the upper half of a slaughtered chicken, in which boning is done with increased yield complying automatically with the difference in size of each individual chicken and the difference in size of left and right side of the upper half of the chicken when the upper half of the slaughtered chicken is severed at the shoulder joint, breast meat is scraped away together with the wing, then the white meat is scraped away.
The proposal disclosed in the latter is an improvement of that disclosed in the former. In the latter proposal, the difference in size of each individual chicken and the difference in size of left and right side of the upper half of the chicken are coped with, and in addition the mixing of foreign matter into meat due to the crashing of the triangular bone (rear side protrusion of the breast bone) when scraping away the breast meat is completely eliminated and the white meat is scraped away smoothly without torn off of part of the white meat.
The automatic boning system of the upper half of a slaughtered chicken of said Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No.11-266780 consists of a main intermittently stepwise feeding section 69 and a secondary intermittently stepwise feeding section 70 as shown in FIG. 21(A). The main intermittently stepwise feeding section 69 consists of a main intermittent feeder 50 and a group of stations of the first to 12th station.
Said stations are located at positions outside the periphery of the main intermittent feeder 50 at a spacing of 30 degrees along the periphery, each of the stations facing toward the center of the feeder 50. On the 1st station is provided a charging section 51 of an upper half of slaughtered chicken (hereafter referred to as a half body), on the 2nd˜5th stations are provided pre-processing sections 52, among which a shoulder skin scraping section 52a being provided on the 2nd station, a shoulder cutting section 52b being provided on the 3rd station, a collar bone and ridge cutting section 52c being provided on the 4th station, and a size measuring section 52d being provided on the 5th station. On the 6th and 7th stations are provided shoulder joint separating sections 53, among which a shoulder tendon cutting section 53a being provided on the 6th station, and an axilla part cutting section 53b being provided on the 7th station. On the 8th station is provided a breast meat scraping section 54, on the 9th station is provided a white meat incision making section 55a, on the 11th station is provided a white meat scraping section 55b, and on the 12th station is provided a rib cage discharging section 56.
As shown in FIG. 22(B), said main intermittent feeder 50 is composed of a round table 61 which is provided with twelve attachment cones 68 in the periphery part of the table 61, a half body being to be fixed to each of the attachment cone; an stepping drive section 65 for rotating the round table 61 intermittently stepwise at an angle of 30 degrees; and a lifting mechanism 66 for lifting the table 61 every time the rotation of the table 61 is stopped. The drawing shows the state the round table 61 is lifted up to a determined position.
Each of the half body attachment cones 68 faces each of the stations when the round table 61 is stopped. Each of said attachment cone is provided with a shoulder support to support the half body from inside thereof, and a lock releaser 64 to release the locking of said shoulder support is provided at the rib cage discharging section 56 on the 12th station. The locking is released by the descent of the table 61 when the rotation of the table is stopped to enable the discharging of rib cage.
Said proposal of the automatic boning system of the upper half of slaughtered chicken of the invention disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No.11-266780 was improved by some inventors of the present invention and others in the invention disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No.2001-211818. However, there remain some aspects required to be further improved, particularly further endeavors are demanded to improve the pre-processing step including the charging step of the half body before boning, which will influence on the result of processing in the succeeding steps.